Persistent muscle tension? Why stretching your tight muscles may not be working.

Do you feel persistent tension in a muscle and notice that stretching doesn’t provide relief? There are a lot of reasons why a muscle may feel tight including weakness or being overwork, surrounding instability, nerve tension.

Weak and Overworked Muscles:

Muscles that are weak may feel tense as a response to being overworked to perform daily functions. While it may seem counterintuitive to contract and put the muscle under stress with strength training, this may be exactly what muscle needs! Strengthening muscles can help improve blood flow, range of motion, and most importantly help you more easily perform your daily activities. Additionally, if surrounding musculature is very weak, a muscle may feel tense in response to picking up the slack of the other weaker muscles. A detailed assessment by a physical therapist can help you determine what muscle groups may need targeted strengthening.

Surrounding Instability:

In the case of joint instability following injury, surgery, and in individuals with hypermobility, surrounding muscles may tighten as a way to create a sense of stability in that area of the body. This can become problematic when the muscle is persistently holding tension, and not contracting and relaxing as it needs to in daily function. Again, the solution to this is strengthening all muscles around the joint or area of injury to build stability, and working more on joint mobility (taking the joint itself through a range of motion) versus stretching the muscles in that area.

Neural Tension:

Neural tension occurs when a nerve is overstretched, or compressed, and is unable to slide and glide throughout tissues and bone structures as it normally should. When this occurs, the symptoms can manifest as a tight muscle in the body. Neural tension can occur anywhere along the length of a nerve, and a detailed assessment from a skilled physical therapist is beneficial in identifying the root cause of the tension, and prescribing proper interventions to improve the nerve’s mobility.

Not sure if what the source of your muscle tension is? We can help! Schedule an appointment here, call us at 312-643-1555, or email info@dynamic-pt.com.